Further Activities

Enabling Innovation is a science-based, strategic management tool that enables research facilities outside the university system to analyze and enhance their capacity for innovation. The tool looks at the capacities that institutes in non-university research organizations need to have if they are to successfully initiate innovations and reap their (economic) benefits.

Enabling Innovation was developed as part of a project funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), which also involved Germany’s non-university research institutions (the Fraunhofer Society, Helmholtz, the Leibniz Association, and the Max Planck Society).

Goals and benefits of Enabling Innovation

Enabling Innovation offers the research institutions the opportunity to define their approach to innovation and identify areas in which there is still potential for improvement. Moreover, applying the tool can encourage internal communication and boost employees’ awareness of the topic of innovation. This can have a positive impact on a research institution’s innovative capacities.

Using Enabling Innovation allows the centers or institutes to actively advance their respective goals in the area of innovation, depending on the individual opportunities that are open to them. Approaches for converting objectives into tangible knowledge and technology transfer processes can be identified, and the results can then be used to further develop the institute’s innovative capacities in a targeted way.

Further information

Please contact your technology and knowledge transfer office or the Helmholtz Head Office for support in implementing Enabling Innovation. They will also be able to provide you with further information, for example regarding moderators who have experience in using Enabling Innovation. We particularly recommend that you involve your transfer office if your institute or facility does not have any prior experience with Enabling Innovation.